You do agree that a good web designer must always strive to “read the future”, right?
To predict the trends and align his/her efforts with them even before they get to turn themselves into trends. Well, we’re here to lend you a helping hand with that, empowering you with a forecast on what will change, what will become even more prevalent and eventually what will become outdated in UI design in 2017.
So, here’s what professional experts with extensive experience in UI design predict for the year to come:
1. Extreme Minimalism
If in 2016 the trend of minimalist, clean, airy design spread like wildflower, wait to see the trend of extreme minimalist design simply explode in the year to come!
Well-experienced designers predict that a magazine-specific layout (which some visualize in black-and-white, while others featuring bold, retro-style colors and arty, pop culture themes) will take over the digital interface.
Big, visually-appealing photos, engaging videos and highly simplified icons will outshine the long copy. Copy which will eventually get refined to short, easy to read and to understand phrases.
Conclusion: the print layout is expected to take over the digital world and the human eye will become, in 2017 more than now, the main “target” for all designed interfaces.
2. Micro-Interactions and Animations
By far the most popular and therefore the best representation of a successful micro-interaction is Facebook’s “like” button.
Well, it looks like in 2017 designers will strive to come up with many more interactive forms of visuals, challenging their creativity to add the fun factor to them, too, so that they should: inform and engage and entertain at the same time.
Users feel „important” for a certain feedback is asked from them and they get to visualize what will happen if they click a certain button, if they perform a certain action.
Interaction is key in 2017’s web design and if you add creativity and fun, as well, then you’ve got yourself a magic formula!
3. Illustrations
UI design has been about authenticity (“template web design” has been forgotten long, long time ago) this year and it will surely be about authenticity even more in 2017! About authenticity and personality, as well!
Even more than photography, illustrations allow you and your team to get creative and to enjoy unlimited freedom when you’re trying to present your brand’s uniqueness through storytelling.
Go for doodle-like illustrations if you want to portray a fun, playful brand or for line-based illustrations if you want to project a more sophisticated, professional look for your company.
4. Gradients and Vivid Colors
Ok, how about flat design and muted colors? Been there, done that, it’s time to move along and to experiment!
What does this mean? It means that if you want to infuse some personality and dynamism into your UI design in 2017, you’d better get bold and go for vibrant color palettes and gradients.
Warning! Make sure that the vivid colors that you’ll opt for compliment and highlight your content. That you don’t sabotage yourself by choosing a color palette that goes against your content!
5. Parallax
Since we’ve already forecast the trend of the „new”, modern magazines-specific layout, parallax is the perfect mechanic to pair it with!
The effect where the foreground moves at a faster rate than the background creates the impression of dynamism and of a fluid flowing content that both we and users are addicted to.
If you compliment it with text and imagery and with that non-traditional type of layout we were just referring to, the effect of fluidity is guaranteed!
Still, be cautious! If you’re not prudent, parallax can tire your users’ eyes!
6. Typography
Bid farewell to once so cutting-edge, now „dusty” sans-serifs fonts and say „hello!” to the new big, bold, artsy looking fonts!
In 2017 you’ll get to challenge your creativity not just to put together illustrations, eye-catching minimalist layouts and „humanized”, fun-filled micro-interactions. You’ll get to create your own statement „look at me” typefaces, too, thus adding even more personality to your content!
Remember! You can craft uniqueness by simply putting big, beautiful fonts into the center of your stage!
7. Eye-Catching, Full-Screen Video
It’s true that it’s no longer a breakthrough trend, but immersive, visually-appealing videos will become even more prevalent in 2017!
Again, as we’ve already mentioned, the human eye gets (vision more than any other human sense) constantly stimulated through dynamic, storytelling videos. They catch attention, they engage and if you pair them with eye-pleasing typography you get: a match made in heaven!
8. Scrolling Down and Long Content
And here’s another not-that-new-anymore trend that will continue to grow in the year to come, too: continuous scrolling!
Why is it that this type of viewing has got so popular is pretty obvious: users get to „digest” long content in a fluid, less-disruptive motion.
What’s truly interesting is that it has become more and more popular for larger screened devices, too. That’s right, those old strict demarcation lines between mobile and desktop devices type of design have become more and more blurry.
Expect to see more and more websites featuring this type of mechanic on desktop devices, too.
Big plus! Continuous scrolling down is a so very versatile mechanic, since it works great on landing pages, on news stories, long-form copy and, again, on all devices, too!
9. Breaking the Grid
Since we’ve already stressed out that dynamic layout is going to be a big trend in 2017, we couldn’t possibly have left this related forecast out: UI designers will be breaking the rigid grid!
Feel free to experiment, in the name of fluidity and dynamics! Play with focal points, layering, motion and depth, since your UI design’s potential will no longer get limited by a grid.
Be cautious though! Never ever should you put form ahead of function! Know your limits, when you’re experimenting breaking from the grid’s tradition, lest you should come up with a UI design less intuitive and rather confusing for your user. You definitely don’t want that!
10. Cards-Based Design
Told you there’s going to be little (close to none) „borders” left between desktop and mobile devices design. Card-based design is just one eloquent example, a trend that will grow more and more influential in 2017!
Just think about, let’s say, Pinterest! It’s probably one of the best examples of engaging cards-based design. The secret behind its popularity: it enables designers to structure and display large bits of data on a screen at a single click/tap/scroll.
Not only that you get to organize your information so that it should be easy-to-dig-through for your users, but you can customize your cards, too!
How do you prefer them? Do you want them to spin, to flip or to stack maybe?
And now we’ve reached the end of our list of „premonitions” when it comes to 2017’s trends in UI design.
Which one/s of them do you find more „likely to turn into a big hit”, which one/s of them do you consider to be outdated already and what other predictions, that we haven’t added to our list, can you share with us?
